Art and shiny things…
Will we breathe
like ballet
dancers, learn
to bleed song—
toes pointed?
Will you still
learn this dance?
This is me
trying to
lengthen my-
self. To stand
on the thin
ends of my
swollen toes
and fool my-
self into
Marlin M. Jenkins, Puritan Magazine
The stage is blank now. Ribbons swirling, smoke
illuminated from beneath by red
lamps focused on the emptiness, oak boards
laid down into a pattern which affords
a place to leap and land: the colored thread
of narrative in dance has disappeared.
Those arms, like crane wings catching air, once sheared
the curtained wind as if to fly, their lines
as straight as quills, or intricate cleft braids
whose interwoven motion still cascades
like water falling through the wreathed designs
we only dreamed could be performed.
W.F. Lantry
One good thing about music / when it hits / you feel no pain
—Bob Marley, Trenchtown Rock
When her body is a compass
bearing South, and she is crouched
bare-toed and feckless above steaming pavement
poised to give birth to drum or bass,
Red Bull triggered at the wrist,
hips a bouquet of cackling fingers,
lips two hummingbirds aimed for flight,
the Glock-Nined baby brother
she nursed from croup
with lavender oil and Cat’s Claw bark,
for whom she turned a fist of nothing
into school fees and uniform,
and whom she will bury
in St. Andrew Parish Church Cemetery
once the sun fully rises,
feels more like a brilliant toothache
her tongue worries,
than a tumid and wild devastation.
-Idrissa Simmonds, Crab Creek Review
Coffee and Irony 